Archive for March, 2008

Second Life good for the disabled

It’s no secret by now that Second Life, with all it’s frustrating problems of stability and bugs, and all the seedier side of things, such as cybersex and griefers, also is a great place where real good things can happen.

We’ve heard about how corporations are using the virtual space as a way to cut costs and make meetings and collaboration far more efficient than is can be in the real world. How educators are using it for experiments, educational curriculum and even as long-distance learning centers. and then there are those whose real lives can be changed in a positive way through their virtual lives.

I personally know of a couple people who, in real life dread going into public for a couple reasons. One of whom was in a car accident a couple years ago and is unable even to speak or move around easily, find that Second Life allows her to be ‘normal and beautiful’ again.

We’ve also read stories about how the psychological affects of SL can be ‘damaging’ to many and, yet highly positive to others.

CNN.com has a great story of the latter. Featuring a few residents, the story centers around how Second Life is being used to help those within the autistic spectrum and their families.

“For people with autism, we’ve found it’s a very nice way of setting up situations they might come across in their everyday lives,” Bignell said. “For people who have social, emotional, communicational problems … we can get them familiar with an environment before they actually try it out in real life.”

iReport: ‘Naughty Auties’ battle autism with virtual interaction – CNN.com

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Is the great mystery of “search ranking” finally solved?

Unlikely.

At least, we’re a little closer, thanks to Jeska Linden and her timely blog post.

Now – where are all the residents who complain about Torley posting tutorials when only posts about the grid’s stability should matter? Will they chastise Jeska for this ‘irrelevant’ post, too?

What will no-doubt be one of the more popular and most visited posts on the Second Life™ blog, Jeska Linden reveals tips that will help merchant and other residents improve their search rankings. However, the post makes it seem somewhat as though the Lindens, or at least most other than the engineers and developers, are still a bit in the guessing stage.

Either way, this blog post is timely, if late, and will no doubt start the frenzy of activity as resident merchants frantically work to implement these tips

“Over the last few months, we’ve compiled some of the best practice tips and guidelines to help improve the relevance and search ranking for your classified ads, parcel listings, object descriptions, profiles, etc.”

Tips to Improve Your Search Ranking « Official Second Life Blog

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ALAS! A “voice” of reason!

Image © Linden Lab, Second Life is a registered trademark of Linden LabOur wonderfully cheerful Second Life friend Torley Linden posted more tutorials this morning, subject: voice controls. Unfortunately, the gripers and voice-haters come out of the woodwork again. In all the blog talkbacks, 90% of the ’squeaky wheels’ dump on Torley and anyone who tries to speak any reasoning to them. Of course, it’s the loud minority that gets all the attention. So be it.

Of the few talkbacks that try to speak some reason – whether it’s the fact that the voice abilities in Second Life have hardly any load or bearing on how SL itself operates – the ‘voice-haters’ still insist forcing their ideas down everyone else’s throat. Simply because they don’t want to be found out they are really a guy playing a girl in SL – in secret.

Or some other secretive reason they desperately don’t want others to know about.

What other reasonable, plausible cause would they have for their vile hatred of a pretty simple, and incredibly useful technology? And they always find a way to justify their hatred: “Sl is unstable and voice is the cause” or “fix SL instead of putting features” and so on.

Okay – if that’s the case… and voice as a feature is hosing the Grid – then let’s remove the voice feature from Second Life.

While we’re at it, let’s follow another suggestion made in the talkbacks: Let’s remove all “flexi” (felxible prims) capability. But why stop there?

Let us also remove all particle effects, too. Those can cause huge lag in a crowded area where they might be overused. Oh, wait – all ‘networked’ vending machines should be abolished as well. Come to think of it, since we are talking about the grid’s performance issues – I think all textures and screenshots uploaded should automatically be limited and resized to 128 by 129 pixels in size.

Oh, but wait… water should not be animated and the particle clouds used in the currently ‘traditional’ viewer (as opposed to WindLight) should be abolished, too. Oh, and WindLight itself should not be introduced. In fact – scripted prim attachments should also be abolished. After all, those “MultiGadgets” can kill a sim if you get more than two or three on the same sim together. So… no more scripted HUDs, please!

In fact, let’s also just remove all scripted objects completely.

OH! I almost forgot… if you get more than say six or seven people in the same location – especially on the mainland – grid performance and stability (from these individuals’ perspectives) drops drastically low. It’s horrible!

So let is also abolish all avatars. No more avatars to clog the system performance! There! That will solve everything! Someone please put this suggestion into the Public JIRA, quick!

In fact – it’s the easiest solution of all: remove all avatars and you won’t have to bother with removing all those other features that cause grid instability I suggested above.

The grid would be ridiculously stable then, wouldn’t it? It doesn’t matter how popular all these ‘features’ are. The important thing is that grid instability is vastly unpopular. And since all these things combined are the cause of it – they should all be abolished!

So… among all the talkbacks – DaQbet put it most eloquently:

DaQbet Kish Says:
“Obviously Im parroting what I see as nothing more then speculation offered up as fact. After a almost a year of reminding people that Voice is a choice and that many things can cause lag the voice haters still cant resist attacking anyone who dares to mention Voice and Second Life in the same sentence. Why no lashing out at Troley’s many other helpful tutorials other then to take cheep shots when ever the opportunity arises. Ill comment no further. And once again thank you Torley for your efforts.”

So – all you voice-haters: just turn it off and nevermind. Stop forcing your ideas and ’solutions’ down everyone elses throats and keep to yourself.

All you bling-haters, turn it off in your viewer and nevermind. See above.
All you particle-haters: turn it off and nevermind. See above.

All you script-haters: turn around and walk the other way. I don’t see how you can turn those off!

View the blog post here:
Can you hear me now? 7 VOICE CHAT Video Tutorials! « Official Second Life Blog

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